Defending students
In the early hours of June 10th, federal agents arrested seven young people connected with efforts to force the University of Michigan to divest from the Israeli government in the wake of the war on Gaza. With SWAT team armament, the Department of Justice roused college students, handcuffed them, and put them in armored cars because of their alleged actions during the 2023 - 2025 protests against the US support for Israel. Eight young people, one of whom is out of the country, are charged with conspiring to orchestrate a campaign of intimidation and terror targeting homes, businesses, organizations, and individuals.
The US attorney for the DOJ, Jerome Gorgon, asserted that the students' alleged conduct crossed the line from free speech protests into criminal intimidation. FBI director Kash Patel called the actions of the students a “coordinated campaign of violent, criminal acts.”
The eight young people named in the indictment are: Zainab Aliasgar Hakim, Amatullah Aliasgar Hakim, Paige Elizabeth Feyock, Ahmetkerem Korkaya, Jonathan Hongru Zou, Alexander Matthew Sepulveda, Mariam Muhammed Odeh, and Colin Hunter Weger. They face between 5 and 20 years in prison.
The indictment lists specific actions that, taken individually, constitute minor acts of vandalism, such as spray painting and breaking windows. These acts are framed in the indictment to sound threatening, but none amounted to more than minor property damage and throwing foul-smelling liquids into homes.
None of these activities can be equated with terrorism or serious intimidation. Certainly, none is a federal crime. Moreover, none of these students was ever prosecuted at the state level for vandalism or property damage.
At least two of them have lawsuits against the University of Michigan because of their treatment by police and university personnel during the occupation movement, drawing attention to the genocide in Gaza.
Much of the 63-page indictment draws on encrypted messaging apps and the history of Google searches to make the case for conspiracy and terror. It appears that the government alleges that the very effort to encrypt messages indicates a crime. The indictment reads, “the defendants used encrypted messaging apps to attempt to conceal their work, though they also used searches on Google Maps to locate some of the homes and businesses they were targeting.”
"The defendants and unindicted conspirators held meetings where they collaborated to identify various specific targets of their 'autonomous actions,' " the indictment says. "The targets included University of Michigan leadership, businesses, and anyone they believed supported directly or indirectly the State of Israel."
The indictment alleges that the eight plotted how to carry out the attacks on homes and businesses.
The ferocity of federal officials and the level of charges against these young people are outrageous and should concern all of us who recognize the tenacles of fascism reaching into our lives.
John Philo, the executive director of the Sugar Law Center, defending the young people, explained how this is an escalation in federal efforts to criminalize free speech.
“The actions of law enforcement appear to be a new low in the criminalization of student opposition to the human rights violations, war crimes, and genocide in Gaza. Based on evidence that the government appears to have had for more than a year and for actions occurring nearly two years ago, the federal government is seeking to bring federal charges for acts traditionally reserved for local prosecutors. It must be asked why and why now.”
Fascist forces are losing their grip. The forces of opposition are growing, especially as more and more people are drifting away from the MAGA mindset. The reality of an economy in turmoil, a war that no one wants, and increasingly erratic, corrupt, and brutal behaviors by those in authority, are combining to encourage people to look for new ways of living together. Some of this exploration is taking the form of voting the bad guys out of office, even as voter suppression intensifies. But much more of it is fostering a serious rethinking of who we are as a people. Student movements and the leadership of young people are essential to our capacities to develop more creative and joyful ways of living.
All of us need to resist this latest effort to not only disrupt and destroy the lives of young people of conscience but also to intimidate a generation whose imaginations and moral sensibilities are precious to all of us.